


A Guide to Moods

by vass



Category: Long Live the Queen (Video Game)
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Blessed by the favor of cats, Class Issues, Collar, Cruel Elodie, F/F, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 06:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9587219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/pseuds/vass
Summary: Achievement unlocked: Alice is afflicted by the favor of Queen Elodie.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anaraine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anaraine/gifts).



> Content notes: canon-compliant for the Elodie/Alice epilogue. That is to say, D/s dynamic but with outright abuse and no real consent possible or attempted. Alice loves Elodie, but that does not change the fact that Elodie is abusive and Alice has no way of refusing her and surviving.
> 
> On a canon note, I consulted the LLQ wiki, but did not ensure that all the details I included are possible within the one playthrough.

**Willful**

You have known your mistress less than half a year, and already the young queen is driving you to distraction. Thoughtless, heedless, _wild_ girl! Not so wild she can't behave prettily for her father and the court, though. They're charmed by her. You remember Queen Fidelia, who was as courteous to the lowest servant as she was to foreign rulers. More courteous, sometimes. Maybe that's why she died young. Her daughter seems determined to slide from one danger to another, risking her neck at the hunt and her reputation in the ballroom.

You are not sure which will drive you mad soonest: the danger your mistress is in, or the scent of her soft rose-colored hair as you brush it out after her bath. But this morning you're fairly certain it's the disrespect that will do it. You had just gotten the mud stains out of her ladyship's Lumen robes, which she'd insisted on wearing a-horse, and had carefully coaxed all the creases out of it and that new tea dress, when what would please your mistress but to try on every outfit in turn and then throw them all on the floor and stomp across them on her way out, wearing the school uniform she'd arrived home in?

You vent your feelings in a bit of ill-considered rude verse. Unluckily, the queen strides into her quarters while you're still holding the piece of paper in your hands. All you can think to do is bluff. Bluff, and pray the queen doesn't know your handwriting. "My lady, there is a letter for you," you say demurely, and stifle a giggle that is as much horror as hilarity. Someone must be watching over you, because her mistress laughs when she reads it. Very nervously, you smile too.

**Afraid**

She ordered you flogged for running into her. That was her right, although not one the late queen would have exercised. It was less proper that she wanted to _watch_. Her châtelaine, Margery, looking as uncomfortable as you are afraid, held out a slender birch switch for inspection. "My lady?" she said.  
"No," the queen said. "I want her flogged with my own riding crop." She held up a fearsomely heavy leather crop. _No wonder the stable master didn't want her hunting yet,_ you thought.

"My lady, if you please, the girl will be no use to you this month or longer if I hit her with that," Margery said. "I can make her as sorry as you like with the other, and not ruin her work." The queen, who had begun to frown at Margery's first words, looked thoughtful as she finished. She reached out and took the birch switch from Margery, and caressed it slowly with her hands. After a long moment, she handed it back to the châtelaine. "Thank you, I believe this will do," she said.

Every blow felt like it was coming from your mistress's own soft hands. Bent over a chair facing the queen, you could see her eyes on you, hungrily watching your face as each blow landed.

A little more than two months after the flogging, the Lady Day parade, she caught you in her room and accused you of stealing from her. You hadn't felt like standing out in the noise and hubbub watching your mistress on her high horse. So you'd taken advantage of the quiet to tidy her things and, just maybe, stroke the satin-stitch whitework on her pillows and wish, in a moment of weakness, that she'd rest her head not on the pillow but on your lap. She seemed so angry, when she burst in and saw you there, but you had the odd feeling she felt as scared and trapped as you did.

And then there was the ball. You'd had nightmares before then, of being called to appear before an assembly of nobles. In those dreams you were wearing nothing but a thin shift, and they all stared. In reality you wore your uniform, and it offered little protection enough. They still stared. So did your mistress. And smiled.

You haven't had a single friendly word from the other servants since then. Even your brothers won't meet your eyes.

**Injured**

Whenever the queen returns from one of her sea voyages, she cancels court, forgoes her customary studies and amusements, and takes to her bed for a day. You would never take on so, not even if you were at death's door, but you can't deny that your mistress's pallor and weakness are real. Real enough to make you wonder about poison, after that first voyage before her coronation, but a word from that Good Lady priestess sets your mind somewhat at ease. Now that you know what's what, you put it about that your lady suffers from sea sickness. In a way it's true.

The thought of that kraken gives you cold chills. With a squid, indeed! Your gran always did say there was a streak of second sight in the family, thanks to some ancestor who got too close to the royal blankets. You'd have written that poem differently if you'd known what you were writing about, but that's always the way of it with foretelling.

The other uneasy thing about those days is how sweet the queen is. Not that false sweetness she saves for her nobles, but something else. Something strangely vulnerable. She says please and thank you like she means it, when you fetch her bedpan or a dipper of water. She's never so kind to you when she's well. It's plain uncanny. Sometimes she visits the treasury before departing, and on her days in bed those times, she sits up and reads trade reports until her head aches. You dab her forehead with a damp handkerchief scented with lavender, and she leans her head against you.

You are torn between wanting your strong, cruel queen back, and wishing the newly gentle one would stay forever.

**Lonely**

It is now a year after Queen Elodie's coronation. She spends the weekend holed up in the royal nursery. She doesn't yell when you finds her there. By now she can't be startled by the likes of you, or by anything else short of an invading army. Her royal composure is as cold and terrible and deep as the sea itself, and as unalterable by mortal means. But just now she is curled up in a big, soft armchair, holding a rag doll. Its hair is the same color as that of the old queen. Your queen is twining this around her fingers. Tiny lights flicker where she touches it.

As you stand there, one of those cats who've been hanging around the palace since that day she healed the sick jumps onto the armchair. The queen ignores it, and it steps onto her skirts, walks across to the other arm, turns, and then steps back onto her lap and starts kneading her legs. The queen rubs its head. She's good with animals, now she's learned how to handle them. So much for the lore that says dumb creatures can tell a good person from a mean one. Or maybe it can tell, and loves her anyway.

You feel something burning in your chest as you watch. And all of the sudden she looks straight up at you, and you know she sees what you're feeling. Maybe she never noticed before, or maybe she did and never cared until now.

That scary gleam comes into her eyes. "Perhaps you would like to be my pet, Alice," your mistress says.

You bow your head.

**Yielding**

Glowing silver streams of light shoot out of her chest, and wrap themselves around your throat, where they solidify into a single band. It feels cold there, and heavy. You didn't know she could do that. From the momentary shock on her face, perhaps she didn't know either. You kneel at her feet, and she puts her hand there on your neck, on the new collar there, as she kisses you.

**Postscript: Hangry**

Tombula's new peasant-rulers are back on their feet again, and they've struck a trade agreement with Nova that made your mistress unnervingly happy. At least it means plenty of chocolates. They're the crown's favored supplier. You keep a box of them by you for when your queen comes in from the tennis fierce and glowing and looking around for her next opponent. A chocolate or two seems to steady her until lunch.


End file.
